


A Third Option

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Compatible [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, Chuck Lives, F/M, Feels, Grief/Mourning, Post-Pitfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a fact that Mako's phone is ringing. It is 0348 in Sydney, 0148 in Hong Kong. It is September 22nd, 2025, early spring in Sydney, eight months and ten days after Operation Pitfall, and before the nurse even speaks to her, Mako knows Stacker Pentecost has just died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Third Option

In the absence of nearly everything that made up her life since Onibaba, Mako Mori finds it helpful to remind herself of facts. They are not stronger than memories, but they are more useful to her, and as even the ghost Drift fades, they remain. She begins listing them silently as soon as her eyes open.

It is a fact that there isn't space for two people on this bed, much less two people and a squat, stubborn English bulldog, and so Mako and Max are pressed side-by-side on top of Chuck. This does not bother any of them. Chuck can't sleep without some pressure against his chest. Mako finds the rise and fall of his breath to be a soporific constant, like the tide. Max likes warm bodies who feed him.

It is a fact that this room is bare, but for the twin bed and nightstand. Between them, they own enough civilian clothes to fill the closet, and that's all. Neither one of them knows how to play house, and the money they managed to save before the Jaeger program became volunteer-only now goes toward rent. They make a little here and there off public appearances and interviews, but those won't keep happening forever, and the Pan-Pacific Rebuilding Initiative is full-time work for part-time pay. So when Herc offered to go in with them on a little two-story in Ashfield, they said yes, though Chuck said it through clenched teeth. A flat of their own is out of the question, and the fact is that Hercules Hansen is the only housemate they could find who would just turn up the telly when he hears two hundred pounds of muscle smack the floor upstairs. 

It is a fact that Mako's phone is ringing. It is 0348 in Sydney, 0148 in Hong Kong. It is September 22nd, 2025, early spring in Sydney, eight months and ten days after Operation Pitfall, and before the nurse even speaks to her, Mako knows Stacker Pentecost has died.

When Mako ends the call, Chuck's eyes are open. "We'll fly out in the morning, yeah?"

"It's already morning," Mako tells him, and they lie there until the sunrise. Their window faces east. The first time Mako looked out of it, she slipped into a memory from the Drift, a RABIT she had chased once, when they were still in training: knuckles white around the open door of a Bell Kiowa, staring back at the city, phone jammed under one side of the headset as he listened to it ring out to his mum's voicemail greeting again and again. It didn't mean anything. Of course all the cell networks were down, overloaded. She was probably trying to call Chuck at the same time. Then the cloud went up.

It is a ten hour flight from Sydney to Honolulu. Mako spends it in one of a new and growing list of memories she does not share with Chuck. The last time she boarded a plane. "You are a brave girl," Stacker told her, "and I'm so lucky to have seen you grow. Now I need you to do for me what we did for Tamsin. Don't stay and watch."

Together they squared their shoulders. Mako didn't cry then, nor at any point on the flight. It's just as well that he asked her to leave; the PPDC set Striker Eureka out in the Miracle Mile, facing east, an ever-vigilant sentinel, and this made Chuck scowl. "What's the point of sitting around to watch him rust?" he said, and Mako didn't bother reminding him that Striker would never rust.

In the hotel room that overlooks the cemetery and the abandoned coastal wall, she changes into dress blues and plain black boots. It's raining, and the wool greatcoat is too much for Hawaii at the end of summer, but it's all she has with the PPDC insignia anymore.

Marshal Stacker Pentecost is laid to rest beside Ranger Tamsin Sevier at 1300 hours, Honolulu time, beneath a statue of St. George. Chuck holds the umbrella over her, raindrops pounding on the black fabric, as Mako turns the first shovelful of soil onto the casket. They go to leave when everyone else does.

"Miss Mori. Could I have a minute?"

Mako looks back, and Raleigh Becket raises the edge of his umbrella, along with his eyebrows.

She could just walk under his umbrella, but Chuck hands her theirs, pulls his collar up around his ears, and slogs off. He tries to hide his eyes from her, but she sees the look in them.

"I hope you'll forgive my timing, but I don't know when we'll be able to speak again," the newly minted Marshal Becket says as they walk through row after row of granite crosses. "Up at Kodiak, we're starting the next phase of the Jaeger program."

"Herc has told me," she replies. "How does your funding stand?"

"We might have to cobble some Jaegers together from Oblivion Bay scraps and ration cans, but at least they'll be running Doctor Gottlieb's new OS." Becket keeps his eyes forward. "I know you're already involved with the PPRI, and don't get me wrong--that's fulfilling work. Still, I want to extend a formal invitation. Come back to the Academy and see what we're doing. If it feels right, stay on as a trainer. The cadets would benefit from it, more than you can imagine."

A formal invitation. As opposed to the invitation Herc has extended to her for months, whenever Chuck wasn't in the room. "They need you, Mako. Those ugly bastards are coming back someday, with all of Newt's memories in their heads, and the Jaeger program needs you at the top to make sure we're ready."

She asks Becket what she asked Herc, the first time. "Only me?"

The Marshal is more diplomatic than his former co-pilot. Three Drifts with Herc would have shown him everything he needs to know about Chuck. "Any Ranger can understand your relationship with Mister Hansen," he says, standing still to look out at the unfinished wall and the grey sea beyond. "You temper him."

That is as succinct a description of it as Mako has ever heard, and she remembers a RABIT Chuck chased once: standing with her father at the forge, not yet big enough to wield the hammer or the tongs, but she could watch as the steel was heated, folded, heated again.

The crackle of the forge transforms back into the battering rain. "He still wears his dog tags," Mako says softly. 

Becket reaches over to touch two fingers to the blue in her hair. "You still wear these." 

Anyone can understand the effect she has on Chuck; no one seems to understand that, like the Drift, it works both ways. Mako's rage has always been better hidden. Maybe someone in LOCCENT heard her whisper, "For my family," after they made their first kill by thrashing Spinejackal into the streets of Melbourne. Otherwise, Chuck is the only person alive who knows.

Becket does not seem to be waiting for her to answer anymore. He is in a memory of his own, not really seeing the rain-shrouded horizon. "When Pentecost came to find me at the Wall," he murmurs, "he asked if I'd rather die there, or in a Jaeger. I guess I never expected to have a third option."

The tears surprise her, but there they are, and she bends at the waist, one hand pressed over her heart and the other gripping the umbrella as she sobs. Becket's eyes are wide and his mouth is open. He touches her shoulder, says her name. He waits while she cries for the first time since Tokyo.

It lasts three minutes, and then she stands up straight again and manages, "I will consider your offer, Marshal Becket."

When she steps into the hotel room Chuck is down to his pants and undershirt, a beer from the minifridge in his hand, television on, sound off. He looks up, sees the tears she has not wiped off her cheeks, and something hardens in his eyes. He shuts off the TV, finishes his beer in one swig.

Mako hangs up her wet clothes while Chuck stares at the ceiling. Even if either of them wanted sex, their hotel room is on the third floor, so instead she climbs onto the too-wide bed and onto him and puts her head on his chest and listens to him breathe. After a while he lets out a colossal sigh and turns off the lamp and locks both arms around her, too tight for her to sleep, but she doesn't think she'll sleep tonight anyway.

The fact is that this was always going to happen. The fact is that Mako has never missed the Drift so much, and she hopes the Precursors try again soon.


End file.
